Chapter Twelve: Rumors of the Heroes
“Huh?”
We were on our way to the next village and had been traveling for about an hour, which I’d spent working in the back, when I noticed a strange sound.
Coming from the other side of the carriage wall came the sound of a man desperately out of breath. I poked my head out to see a flustered man running beside us, a bag in his outstretched hand.
“What are you in such a rush for?”
I figured that showing curiosity in times like this could easily lead to a sale.
We slowed the carriage down so that I could hear what the man had to say.
“I have to get to the village across the mountains…”
“You’re running to the village over the mountains?”
Apparently his parents were sick and he was running to get medicine for them. Filo had just overtaken him on the road.
“Yes, and without a minute to spare!”
“Filo, if you ran as fast as you could, how long would it take to get there?”
“Lemme think… Well, I could go faster if I didn’t have to pull the carriage…”
“Fine.”
I looked over to Raphtalia, and she nodded immediately, already understanding what I meant to say.
“We’ll take you there for a silver piece.”
“What?”
The man was shocked.
“But I was just going to buy medicine… See, I don’t have enough money…”
“You can just give us something worth a silver piece. Or just bring us medicinal herbs the next time you see us. Of course, if you don’t keep your promise…”
“Oh, well, if that’s okay then…”
“Great! That settles it! Filo?”
“Okay!”
I moved over onto Filo’s back, and pulled the man up to sit with me.
“Woah!”
The man was surprised, but Filo covered him with her wings and took off at full speed.
Raphtalia was waving to us from the carriage.
“Here we go!”
“Oh!”
Filo might have been shaped like an owl now, but it had done nothing to slow her speed.
Before we knew it, we had already arrived at the man’s house.
“That was so fast!”
“You better hurry up and get them their medicine. Careful now!” “Okay!” The man went into the house, and I followed him inside. We hadn’t
finished discussing my payment. It was an average farmer’s house. I could hear violent coughing coming
from somewhere inside. “Ma… It’s medicine, you gotta drink it.” I followed the sound of the voices, and came across the young man
giving medicine to two older people, both with pale faces. I didn’t know what kind of medicine it was, but it seemed to be more effective than the medicines I was accustomed to. “Hey. I’ll take care of administering the medicine. Why don’t you go
boil some water and make them something good?” “Are you sure?” “Yeah, I’m just waiting to see what happens.” I took the medicine from the man, and, supporting the weight of the old
woman, gently gave her some medicine. I hoped that the medicine efficacy skill booster I’d learned before would
work. Cough… Cough… The old woman took the medicine and managed to swallow some of it. The woman was suddenly enveloped in a shower of glowing light.
Apparently that signified that the medicine had been effective. She even looked healthier. Some color had returned to her pale face, and she seemed to be coughing less than she had been.
“Just try and relax. Your family will be back with food soon.”
She managed a weak smile and then lay back down.
“Now then…”
I left the room and went into the kitchen.
“Did they take the medicine?”
“Yes, and it seems to have worked.”
He sighed deeply, as though a great weight had been removed from his shoulders.
“I’ll be back later, so make sure you have my money.”
“Okay.”
I left the house, found Filo, and quickly road back to where we had left the carriage.
When we arrived back at the village the man was there waiting for us, looking tense.
“Um…”
“What is it?”
We talked as we unloaded the luggage from the carriage.
“My mother seems to be doing much better…but just who are you?”
“You don’t need to know.”
If he knew my name, he’d instantly associate me with the bad rumors that have been going around. And he would start to doubt me.
“Please just tell me your name.”
“I’m not obligated to. The medicine worked, right? So bring me a piece of silver, or something worth that much.”
“All right!”
He ran back to the house, flipped through some materials, and then came back out with some food.
“So that’s it, huh? Fine, well, keep an eye out for us, okay?”
“Yes! Thank you very much!”
The man looked very happy.
I suppose it’s a bit of a digression, but some time later on we actually did come back to this village. The old lady was very energetic, almost too much so.
I went back to my studies in the back of the carriage. I was trying to read the intermediate medicine recipe book. The recipe book seemed easier to understand than the magic book, so I was starting with that one. But after I dedicated a bunch of time to translating a recipe, I found out that it was a medicine I already knew… I was disappointed.
Come to think of it, I had been pretty neglectful of my studies up until now. I’d been so busy for the last month that I hadn’t had time to think about it, but if I ever made it out of here alive, I’d have to say something to my brother, who had worn himself out studying too hard.
“Mr. Naofumi, I think we are pretty much done here for today.”
We’d arrived just past noon, and now evening was approaching.
“Are there any parcels or letters that we could take to the next village?”
“I’ve already collected them.”
I climbed out of the carriage and helped load up the luggage.
Granted, there were only certain kinds of people that would give their luggage to a traveling merchant they’d never met. It was mostly cheap things that people wouldn’t be too upset to lose. Even still, we were able to make some good change.
We travelled this way for a while, moving from village to village and town to town.
Whenever someone wanted restorative medicine, I would give it to them myself, and that way they could take advantage of my medicine efficacy skill.
After we’d been at it for two weeks or so, we began to get a bit of a reputation as the merchants with the weird bird that sold everything.
When we had made a good name for ourselves, people became much more trusting, and more and more pedestrians came to ask us for rides. So before long our profits started to rise.
There were some really good things about the traveling merchant’s lifestyle.
The first was that I could sell the medicine that I made while we were on the road. The second was that I was able to absorb any monsters that we came across on our travels. Of course, all I really ever got out of it was typical status boosts.
One other thing I learned after we started traveling was that monsters were very different depending on the locale. Considering that I could grow stronger by absorbing a variety of different monsters, starting this traveling gig was turning out to be a really good arrangement.
The other good thing was that I was now in a position to hear all sorts of gossip.
I’d had no idea for the longest time, but now I was able to make a good guess where the other heroes, Motoyasu, Ren, and Itsuki, had based themselves.
Motoyasu seemed to be out to the southwest of the castle, where he had apparently saved a starving village by breaking the seal on some kind of legendary crop. He must have known to go there since he knew everything about the place already. It actually reminded me a lot of the place we’d been to, where we fought the Nue.
Ren had gone to the southeast of the castle, but apparently he would go anywhere that was inhabited by tough monsters. I’d heard various tales of his exploits—like that he’d defeated a violent dragon somewhere out to the East.
As for Itsuki… I wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, but he had gone with some adventurers that had visited the kingdom seeking help. He went with them to a country in the North, where the government was corrupt. He fought with the resistance to overthrow an evil lord.
Having said that, Itsuki’s story was missing the most details, so I couldn’t really be sure of anything. I’d only heard vague references to him as “that adventurer with the strong bow” and so on.
All of this sounded a lot like something I’d read before coming to this world, something I’d read in the The Records of the Four Holy Weapons.
Anyway, so that’s what our travels were like.
At the end of the two weeks, our stats were looking like this:
Naofumi: LV 34 Raphtalia: LV 37 Filo: LV 32
I guess it was because she was a monster, but Filo was certainly leveling up quickly.
Filo was now much stronger, physically, than she had been. While she used to use both hands (wings?) to pull the carriage, she now only used one, and yawned the whole time.
Naturally, I tried to get her to try harder, but she only protested. “But it’s so light that I lose my motivation!” Whatever. Afterwards, all the shields that I got while traveling only unlocked status
boosters. If there were any interesting shields… well, there was this one:
Crystal Ore Shield: ability unlocked: equip bonus: fine crafting 1
We’d come into a booming mining town, and there was a poor-quality crystal lying there. I let the shield absorb it, and that was what I got. It seemed like a skill that could lead to some serious money making possibilities, but I didn’t have enough information to go trying it out just yet. I tried polishing the crystal ore, but it just broke and crumbled, so it must need to be combined with something else in a recipe. Either that, or I was just doing it wrong.
Regardless, I still needed to translate that book the apothecary had given me.
Sure, if I’d spent two weeks on it, it should have been simple enough to read. And I’d had the thing for close to three weeks now, so I should have been able to glean some information from it.
Antidote, weed killer, healing salve, restorative medicine (I’d already made that), nutritional drink (I’d made that too), gunpowder, acidic water, magical water, soul healing medicine, insecticide, were the recipes I’d been able to figure out, and after I went through them all, the book was over. Apparently you could alter the effectiveness of these basic intermediate medicines by mixing them with different additives. It was all rather vague, so I wouldn’t say that I really had a handle on it. Even still—I was starting to realize that the recipes the apothecary had given me were pretty average for intermediate level.
Well, I’d been able to figure out the book, so I didn’t think I’d need it anymore. I let the shield absorb it. This was the shield I unlocked:
Book Shield: ability unlocked: equip bonus: magic power up (small)
I thought for sure the shield would unlock some intermediate medicine recipes, but I was wrong.
And on top of that, the shield’s defense rating was really low!
It happened the day after I finished translating the recipe book.
We came upon a monster called Torrent, defeated it, and I absorbed it into my shield.
Torrent Shield: conditions met
Blue Torrent Shield: conditions met
Black Torrent Shield: conditions met
Torrent Shield: ability locked:
equip bonus: plant classification 2
Blue Torrent Shield: ability locked:
equip bonus: intermediate compounding recipe 2
Black Torrent Shield: ability locked:
equip bonus: rookie compounding
Intermediate recipes? Was this some kind of joke? I just finished translating that book!
Well, at least I’d only done up until the healing salve. The last time a shield unlocked recipes it was from a Mush, so I guess plant-based monsters would yield recipes. Even still, after I’d put all that work into it all—here they were: unlocked just like that.
The antidote, weed killer, and healing salve could be made from grasses, but I didn’t even know where to get the materials to make anything like gunpowder.
The apothecary’s notes made it seem like you could make substitutions in the case of gunpowder. There was something called Snappy Grass that could substitute, so I did that and tried to make some gunpowder.
It was like a crumbly powder, something like ash that could burn. I gathered it into a bag and made a makeshift bomb.
I set flame to it and planned to throw it at an enemy. It started crackling, but then I dropped it at my feet!
I was scared, but fortunately it didn’t produce anything you could really call an “explosion.”
The acidic water needed to be stored in a glass bottle. It was a liquid that, apparently, was only slightly less acidic than sulfuric acid. It wasn’t made from grasses but was made by taking different natural ores and adding them to water… or something like that. I hadn’t made it yet, so I can’t say for sure… but what kind of person would want such a thing, and what would they want it for? Anyway, I could make some just to absorb into the shield.
The Magic Power Water would restore your consumed magic points when you drank it. But the materials necessary to make it were pretty hard to get your hands on.
If you made it with commercially available grasses, it would cost a small fortune. If we were going to go through the effort of making it, it would be better to sell it than to use it. Just like the Magic Power Water, the Soul Healing Medicine would also replenish the user’s SP. But Raphtalia and Filo didn’t seem to understand what SP was, and they said it just tasted delicious, but like normal water.
The insecticide was easy. You just mixed various herbs that insects hated and either clumped them into a solid or dissolved them in water for a liquid.
So out of my new recipes, the ones that would be good for production and sales were the antidote, the healing salve, and the insecticide.
And the weed killer would be good too. You could make so much of it from so little material that all I’d need to do was give some thought as to where to sell it. I could let the shield absorb the leftovers.
Anti-Poison Shield: conditions met
Gurihosato Shield: conditions met
Medicine Shield: conditions met
Plant Fire Shield: conditions met
Killer Insect Shield Alpha: conditions met
Anti-Poison Shield: ability locked:
equip bonus: defense power 5
Gurihosato Shield: ability locked: equip bonus: attack from plant enemies reduced by 5%
Medicine Shield: ability locked:
equip bonus: medicine effective range expansion (small)
Plant Fire Shield: ability locked:
equip bonus: fire resistance (small)
Killer Insect Shield Alpha: ability locked:
equip bonus: attack from insect enemies reduced by 3%
I bet the original ability for the Anti-Poison Shield was Poison Resistance (medium). But I’d already learned that skill from the Chimera Viper Shield, so it must have changed to accommodate that.
The Medicine Shield would increase some kind of range, though I wasn’t sure exactly what it meant.
It could have meant that the range for any particular medicine would be increased, but it could also mean the number of people it could work on, would increase.
What was Gurihosato? It seemed like the name of some kind of weed killer product. As for Killer Insect Shield Alpha, I imagined that you could produce a beta version or something by changing up the kinds of grasses that you used in the concoction.
The effect of cutting 3% from the damage of certain kinds of enemies seemed pretty useful to me.
The real problem was trying to read the magic book. It was very difficult.
Lately it seemed that Raphtalia was starting to get the hang of it. She’d produced certain effects that looked like they were on the right path. She’d been able to produce an orb of light that would float before her for a few seconds. Considering I was the Shield Hero, I didn’t look so great in comparison.
Filo could use her transformation magic too, so I asked Filo about it after Raphtalia had gone to bed.
It was kind of hard to think of what she did as magic, per se, but I thought it would be good to hear what she thought anyway.
“Yeah, so I, um… I just think about my power, like way down inside, right? And I just like, think about what I want to be and, uh… then I be it!”
Right. Whatever. At least I figured out that she wasn’t doing it as the result of some reasoned process.
But what if I could read the book but still found myself unable to practice the magic? I’d heard that magic can be funny like that.
And I came from a world that didn’t have any magic at all, so if it turned out that I wasn’t able to use it that would be… upsetting. I had to learn it. I just had to.
Not to please the witch from the magic shop… but to stay alive.
When the waves came, there wasn’t much need for me to participate in the fighting. Besides, who knew how I would be treated after the enemy had been vanquished? The best job for me would be to protect the nearby villages and towns. And when I was doing that, being able to use magic or not—that might decide whether or not I made it through the day alive.
I could have bought a crystal ball… but if I could learn magic from this book for free, then that seemed like a better way to go. So lately, when we were on the road, I had the magic book in one hand, and I tried to read it.
I asked Raphtalia how she did it, and she said that she synchronized her magic power with the words on the page, and her soul reacted… Just like Filo’s had been, her explanation was impossible to follow.
Granted, I could follow it better than Filo’s… but what was “magic power” anyway? Did it mean they could feel it, like a sixth sense?
My head was filled with questions like that, and it was driving me crazy.
Well anyway, that’s how we spent those last two weeks.
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